“But what can you do about it? We have to get our fans base strong, and the only way to do that is by winning.”

I took a walk around Sunday afternoon before the game and it did look a little like Fenway Park. (Well, if they put a roof on Fenway and sold some tickets to people of color.)

The Red Sox drew some 12,000 more per game than the Astros’ average to this point of the season, with three of the team’s three biggest after opening day coming this weekend.

But I can’t really be mad at Astros fans. It’s not like the team is giving them much to come and see, with the second-worst start in team history, one game better than that woeful 1975 squad.

Fans, you are forgiven. As Brad Mills said, the few of you who were there did represent.

But while it’s bad enough that Red Sox fans took over the stadium, stadium operators shouldn’t have gone out of their way to make them feel at home. They treated Boston like a minor league team treats the big club when it comes to town.

It was embarassing.

Did they have to play Sweet Caroline as the “Kiss Cam” song? Really?

And apparently, they asked Red Sox fans Boston trivia during the games. Give me a break.

I mean, it is only sports, but they are the enemy, you know? If Whitey Bulger hadn’t bee busted a few weeks ago, the Astros would have asked him to throw out the first pitch.

You think I was nice to the Boston Globe writers who were in town to cover the series?

Heck no.

I ridiculed them for refusing to take the Brett Myers’ screaming bobblehead doll. Of course, when one of them reminded me that I lived in Boston when Myers punched his wife and dragged her by the hair down a Boston street.

“Maybe if they had the doll pulling his wife’s hair, I’d take one,” some smart guy said.

Ouch.

I should have reminded my former Boston Globe colleague Nick Cafardo about a television show we did together in 2005, in which he picked the Texans as the breakout NFL team and we had to go to break because the host and I were rolling off the back off the set in tears of laughter.

I believe I said something like, “Breakout? Breakout? If this were prison, the Texans would be wearing lipstick and braiding Peyton Manning’s hair.”

Anyway, I put up a better fight against the Boston media than the stadium ops did against the Boston fans, and certainly better than the Astros did in getting swept by the Red Sox.

These are the dog days of summer.

Anyway, happy Fourth of July. Maybe the pics below will brighten your day. Just knowing that I have interviewed or spun each of them around on a Beijing nightclub dance floor reminds me of how much I love my job and my country.

U.S. swimmer Amanda Beard doesn't like fur on her body

The Williams sisters bare the U.S. Flag

Lolo Jones is fast, can carry a flag and cut a rug

Flo-Jo did it with flair

Misty May and Kerri Walsh take the gold. (Yes, there is a flag there.)